Chapter 48
forty-eight
Tristyn
Was being there tonight hard?” I run my hand up and down Jeremy’s chest, as his hand mimics my motions on my back.
We’ve been home from tonight’s hockey game for a couple of hours now, and even though the team won, Jeremy didn’t feel like going out with the guys to celebrate. I don’t blame him; it’s hard to celebrate something when there’s a part of you that wishes you could’ve helped them achieve that success.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Does it make me an asshole if I say yes? These guys are my best friends, I wouldn’t have gotten through what I did without them, but—”
“You wanted to be out there with them, not just cheering them on from the sidelines.”
“Something like that.”
“Do you ever regret playing hockey?” I sit up, reading his face, and then I shake my head.
“That’s a stupid question. All you’ve talked about since the day I met you is how much you love it, and obviously, you love it so much that you’re helping the next generation become amazing players.
I just, I mean, everything that happened to you this year was because of hockey. Was it worth it?”
“You mean ending up in a wheelchair, not knowing if I’d be able to walk again?” Jeremy raises an eyebrow, a small smirk pulling at his lips.
When he puts it like that, the question seems extra stupid.
“You know what I mean.” I shove him away. “This was a hockey accident. You wouldn’t have ended up in that chair if—”
“That’s not entirely true.” He cuts me off. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you when we talked about how I ended up in a wheelchair.”
I guess I can’t fault him for that. We weren’t super close when we first talked about what landed us in PT, definitely not nearly as close as we are now.
He still doesn’t know the truth about my wrist. He doesn’t know that Andrew was behind it.
If I told him the truth, he’d kill Andrew.
If I’ve learned anything about Jeremy over the past few months, it’s that he’s protective.
But that’s not the only reason I haven’t told him. There’s a part of me that doesn't know if he’d understand why I continue to put up with Andrew even though it’s blatantly obvious I don’t want to.
“You didn’t?” That's all I can say.
“The initial injury to my back happened during a hockey game my freshman year. Honestly, it was a miracle I was able to play after that. I had surgery, worked my ass off in PT, and was back on the ice in a matter of months, and back on the first line by the fall. Not that it was easy after that.” He continues.
“A lot of pain meds, a lot of PT, and a lot of intentional recovery. I mean, I had played hockey my whole life, and I had always trained a certain way, and suddenly it was like I needed to retrain my body.”
Jeremy pauses, scratching the back of his neck.
“But I did it because I wanted to play hockey. The night of my accident, I was just training. We had just won the championship a few weeks prior, and we had all been on cloud nine. But I decided a few days before the accident, after a lot of conversations with my Coach, that it was time for me to move on.”
“You were going to stop playing hockey?” My jaw drops, but he quickly shakes his head.
“No. I had been drafted by the Florida Panthers before I even started at Rockford University. I wanted to go to school, though. Have a backup plan.” He gives me a small grin that I can only read as his way of saying that it’s a good thing he did.
“I didn’t know how I was going to tell the guys.
It was always us, you know? I didn’t want to think about not playing with them ever again.
And then there was a part of me that regretted the fact that I didn’t make this decision sooner.
If I had, maybe I would’ve cherished our final game a bit more. ”
“They would’ve been happy for you, Jere.”
“Oh, I know. Trust me, I know. I don’t know how I got so lucky with these guys.
I think it was more of an internal thing.
I felt like I was an imposter at the thought of moving into the big leagues.
And I just didn’t know how to handle it all, so I went to the one thing that was always there for me. That always made things better.”
“Hockey.”
“I just skated for hours. Ran drills. Anything to get out of my head and really center myself, and then around 1:30 in the morning, I decided it was probably time to go home. I was meeting the guys the following morning for breakfast, with our Coach, to tell them I’d be leaving before the fall term and I wouldn’t be playing with them in our last season together. ”
I don’t interrupt him, I just let him talk. I know firsthand that sometimes it’s easier to just get everything I need to say out.
“The craziest thing is I wasn’t even that far from my house. I mean, our facility is right up the road.” He laughs, but I can hear the shakiness behind it. “I was on Turner St and—”
Jeremy closes his eyes, as if he’s trying to remember the night. As if he’s trying to remember the details.
“Well, to be honest with you, I really don’t remember much else from that night, just what I was told once I woke up, which was that I had been run off the road.”
My stomach sinks.
“And by some grace of God, someone found me.” He sniffles and then coughs in an attempt to cover it up.
“Whoever was responsible for running me off the road just left. I was suspended upside down in my car for hours. And then I was in a coma. In the beginning, they weren’t even sure if I’d pull through.
The doctors told me when I woke up, after they told me what a miracle it was that I was alive, that the initial crash caused subsequent trauma to my back, but it was the hanging that led to the extensive damage.
The damage that put me in the wheelchair.
The damage that took hockey away from me forever. ”
His eyes meet mine, and the pain from that night seems to dissipate.
“The hardest part is the fact that I might never know the truth. I’ve been trying for months to remember anything from that night.
They told me the smallest detail could break the case wide open, but I’ve got nothing.
” He shakes his head. “And I guess the thought of still being able to play hockey if that person did the right thing to begin with sucks too.”
He laughs, but I can tell it’s forced. Thinking about this moment hurts him.
I reach out and squeeze his hand because it’s the only thing I can think of doing right now. I don’t know what to say or what to do.
I just know I feel sick.
Not just because of what Jeremy went through, or what his family went through after that, but because—
I was in the other car.
You’re sure that it was Jeremy’s car that ran off the road that night?”
“It would be pretty crazy if two cars ran off the road in the same area on the same night, Vince. There’s no way it wasn’t his car.”
“I’m just trying to help you, T. I know your mind is probably running—”
“A million miles a minute?” I pace back and forth in his apartment. “I need to tell him, right? That’s the logical next step.”
“Is it?”
“What do you mean, Vince?” I flop onto the couch. “I’m supposed to keep this from him?”
“I don’t know, Tristyn, but I don’t know if telling him is the best choice.”
“He loves me, and I love him. I can’t continue living our lives. I can’t continue letting him love me if he doesn’t know I’m responsible for taking away the most important thing in his life.”
“It was a big part of his life, yes. But if you tell him now, he’ll not only lose hockey all over again, but he’ll lose two of the most important people in his life. Do you really want him to relive that pain?”
“All he’s ever wanted is closure, Vince. I can give that to him.”
“I love Jeremy, I do, T. And I know he loves you, but having this conversation with him could change that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you want to believe that he’ll understand what happened that night. That you can be honest about that night being how you hurt your wrist and that Andrew was driving and you were terrified for your life, but—”
“You think he’ll turn me in?”
“It is still an open investigation.”
“Vince, that night has been haunting me since it happened. When I looked up the accident in the news, I was so relieved when they said the victim was alive and in the hospital, but that doesn’t mean I forgot about that night. Maybe I deserve to have those consequences.”
“You don’t, T.” He drops a hand on my leg. “What you deserve is getting to be a mother to your son.”
Henry deserves to have a mom. I don’t disagree with Vince when it comes to that, but I don’t know if I agree with not telling Jeremy.
Maybe he would understand. Maybe knowing what happened would be enough closure for him. That he wouldn’t turn me in, but I don’t know that he wouldn’t turn Andrew in.
He knows that Andrew is a horrible person and never really cared about Henry, just the fact that he could control me.
But Andrew has money and lawyers and a family, I don’t. He could easily pin all this on me.
Henry was in the car that night. Andrew was drunk, and I knew it. Even if he went away for this, he’d make sure I’d serve time for endangering Henry… as if I had a choice to not be in the car that night.
And if I went away, the only biological family Henry has left is Andrew’s parents.
And I’d rather die than let him get stuck with them.
“Tristyn?”
“What?”
“Are you going to tell him?”
I shrug.
“Honestly, I don’t know.”